last day of November

Beautiful blue skies, a sack full of new Covid worries, and a splendid Christmas tree that is so playful and full of sparkling joy, that it continues to color my day. This is what the end of November looks like.

Up not too early. I let the cheepers out. They need some play time too, despite their overriding anxiety right now. The disappearance of Pepper (Ed suspects it was a hawk) has unnerved them. Their bossy leader is gone and they hover together like never before, wondering who should set the tone for the day. But, they do like the sunshine and a good dirt bath in the hydrangea patch so out they go, even though I know we will have a tough time getting them back into the coop before dusk sets in.

Breakfast -- each day more cozy and hyggelig than the one before.

I have a list of in person errands to run. Like in the old days before the internet let my fingers do the walking. USPS, UPS, CVS, REI -- all on my list. None are picture worthy.

Finally I pull up to Snowdrop's school and I wait for the girl to come out.

Yep, winter is just about here.

(At the farmhouse)

And now the sun fades and Ed hints that he may need help getting the cheepers into the coop. Chasing them in is hard. I suggest we use sticks. That's what Polish farm girls used to herd geese into the pen. Ed finds sticks. Very long sticks.

Too long to work with, but fun to play with.

It takes a while, but eventually the cheepers are all in. Safe tonight.

I take the little girl home. Where her brothers wait.

And the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle needs finishing touches.

We're ready for December!

 

With love...

Ed and the tree

He's such a good guy in so many ways. Just a couple of recent examples: letting kids climb and settle in on his own napping self (he's big enough to accommodate two). Trying to adjust his sleep cycle so that he can wake up when it is still morning and we can eat breakfast together.

(eyeing a new jigsaw puzzle...)

Always looking for a good rom com for us to watch together. I could go on. Things that are so out of step with his own inclinations and yet he does them. Without complaint or even a grimace.

Perhaps the biggest bend, indeed, plunge into an alien land for him is Christmas with me. His Jewish family did have a Christmas tree when he was a kid (that's New York City for you), but since then, he has pretty much ignored the holiday. Indeed, a good chunk of it -- the commercial aspects of buying stuff, wrapping everything in paper that is then tossed, church music, chopping down holiday trees -- it's all antithetical to all that he lived by. 

Then I came along.

Sixteen years ago, when we first started living together, the kids weren't married and their Christmas was my Christmas. Big tree, family ornaments, lots of food, gifts, music. He never complained and had only one request: that no one ever buy him a present. 

Over the years, I toned it down. The family Christmas moved to the homes of the young families and I stayed with a little tree that I bought for the corner of our living room at the farmhouse. Stuck up on top of an old crate that we found in the barn.

But this year, I let my own holidaying grow. Starting with the tree. Not like your big beautiful to-the-ceiling tree, but big enough to warrant a stand.

I have never loved Amazon more than this afternoon, when I found the carton in my mailbox with the pieces of a stand in it. Easy assembly. All Ed had to do was saw off the end of the trunk and then together, we did the usual "no, lean it to the stairs a little more" and "no, that's too much" until it was centered, screwed in and within minutes, decorated.

All but the handful of glass ornaments from central Europe, coming from this store later this week. But really, the tree is ever so pretty already... with many happy children dancing in twinkling lights...

This is my idea of a hygge moment:

No need to post photos from a cold November day outside. I have our tree. I am happy.

Thanksgiving: only the memories remain

The Sunday after Thanksgiving used to be for me a dreadful day, full of worries and hurried goodbyes. After magnificent Thanksgiving noise, lots of happy hours with grown daughters there was this obvious ending to it all. Drop offs at airports with the stress of poor weather and the inevitable holiday crowds. And then an empty house.

That's all in the past. No one is traveling today, even as the weather is chilly but in a crispy pleasant way. The house isn't exactly empty because the kids are itching to come over for a Gogs play date and of course, there's the evening dinner now back on schedule. For a while anyway. My Chicago girl is darn close to delivering her baby. We expect some schedule shuffling around then. But not yet.

Ed sleeps in once more and normally I'd let him be, but the house needs to be cleaned and besides, we are wasting the best sunlit hours of the day. Ed!

He comes down for breakfast.

After house cleaning, we squeeze in a walk in hour local park and then, back home, I balance kid play with preparing one of the reliable meals of seafood pasta. To get our minds off of turkey and apple gravy and leftover hasselback potatoes.

When I am out on the roads, I see cars with trees on roofs and I think -- everyone is pushing the season earlier this year. And I get it. The pandemic keeps kicking us off the path to normal times and we want to grab as much of those splendid festive moments as we can. We are deprived of frivolity, giddy silliness, of color, of laughter.

My tree, however, is still in the mudroom waiting for a stand. That's okay. I ordered a few more vintage glass ornaments from my friends out in California (they travel all over Europe stocking up for this holiday) and I will trim the tree as things arrive. After I get that darn stand. (Ed pushed hard to keep the tree in a bucket with stones to weigh it down. I know that this would be a clever game plan, but I'm not buying it. I dont want clunky. I want delicate.)

The kids are here in the afternoon. 

 

 

 

Ed is napping. They think he makes a good pillow.

The parents and Sandpiper come just in time for some (new) puzzle work before dinner.

(Watching kid dynamics in a threesome is fascinating to me because most of what I know is households of one or two kids. Snowdrop is completely in a new relationship with Sandpiper, with few of the rivalry issues that routinely come up between her and Sparrow.) 

And so ends our Thanksgiving family wonderfulness.

Late evening. Ed and I have watched two holiday-ish rom coms already this week. I have a lineup of them all ready for us. But, it's late and we toss aside the movie in favor of a Modern Design episode. It's like picking a snugly tattered blankie over a cashmere shawl for the night. True, we have exhausted all of the seasons (22!) of the UK show. No matter. We're now working our way through New Zealand episodes. With popcorn and a candle burning steadily, giving us just a tiny whiff of the holidays, even though it's not even December yet.

Saturday after Thanksgiving

I come downstairs this morning to a finished jigsaw puzzle. No wonder I didn't see Ed upstairs until close to 4a.m. Well good for him! It's been a long time since I've seen him so continuously away from his computer screen.

But of course, now he is still sleeping.

I go out to throw corn into a locked up coop. We're keeping the chickens inside. I can't say there's much logic to it, but at least we know we're buying safe time for them as we discuss the pros and cons of setting them free this winter.

Breakfast? Alone again, naturally!

I could have munched on croissants with the young family. After all, I volunteered to bring some over to their house. It's sort of a half holiday in that one child has an activity, but the second one is cancelled, and the second child has none. So I drive to Madison Sourdough to get them all croissants.

But I save mine to eat with Ed tomorrow. 

So clever of me: leave the croissant crumbs at their house!  

 

 

 

(too young for croissants)

I bring the two older tykes to the farmhouse. Both wanted to come and we have a lovely time doing our usual stuff at the farmette. Please ignore the fact that they are not wearing jackets. It happens.

Then comes the scramble: kids are picked up, but I'd left my phone at the young family's house so now I have to chase them around town to retrieve it. To make this a more pleasant experience (I'm not a fan of much driving), I allow myself a brief visit to this Scandinavian store:

I used to love to come here many many years ago! These days I don't bother. In an effort not to buy stuff, I avoid looking at tempting things that end up only cluttering the house. Still, I'd sprung for a somewhat larger tree this year (like, maybe even 4 ft tall!) and it's going to be one naked tree unless I add a couple of more dainty things to it. I'm not looking for many decorations. Minimalism still feels good to me at this stage of the game. But a couple of delicate items added to it would be nice.

Not that I can decorate the tree yet. I don't have a good stand for it. I'd given away the old ugly thing that never worked anyway and I've been bringing home tiny trees that come already inside one-use stands. So now I bought a bigger tree and I need a real stand. I ordered one and I have to wait a couple of days for it to arrive. A light punishment for my extravagance! 

In the evening, Ed and I are still reheating leftovers. There are dozens of wonderful recipes that I could have used for leftover turkey meat, but I find that what I want most after Thanksgiving is to not read another recipe for at least two weeks. Heat it up, pour on gravy, eat. That is what I call the perfect post Thanksgiving meal.

Friday after Thanksgiving

Not to be too commercial-spirited about it, but somehow that vision of a Santa at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade has always ushered in the Christmas season for us. Thursday evening packs two punches: the big meal of course, and too, in the background, my daughter streams beautiful music that has the unmistakable melodies of the December holiday. And the Friday after? Well, at the farmhouse, we're still trying to figure out just exactly how much turkey meat we have in the fridge from The Big Meal, and Ed is enthusiastically filling in the belly of a Santa in the jigsaw puzzle began yesterday...

 

 

... but it is also the day that the young family acquires the Christmas tree and I am in on that project too. The Christmas season is truly upon us.

It is a bitter cold day. By noon we are still below freezing. I had stayed up past midnight to finish tidying up after the blow-out meal, so I only had to put clean dishes away this morning. And of course there was the matter of the animals.

The thing is, days can be beautiful, magical even, but you have to expect small pockets of wistfulness (if only the young family was with us...) and even the occasional calamity. For example, we lost a chicken yesterday. On Thanksgiving morning, Pepper was there. By evening, when Ed went out to put the cheepers away for the night, she was gone.

We'd raised her from baby-hood. Little Pepper, and how she grew! Maybe four years old. Something like that. Once upon a time, she had been the low one in the cheeper hierarchy, but somehow she managed to crawl out and up and since we put in the new girls this spring, she was the queen. All the chickens were scared of her. When she approached the feeding tray, they scattered, hanging back until she was done.

She was also our most reliable layer: nearly every day, even in the cold season, and always in the coop. 

Ed and I are left with the problem of "what now." We have no idea who took her, though we know it was a complete swipe: there are no feathers. No battle. No remains. I suggest we lock them up for a couple of weeks. We'll also put out the trap, if only to see what we are dealing with. 

Ah well. That's what happens when you raise happy chickens: some of them become a feast for another family of animals. And now we are left with five cheepers -- four girls and one boy. (And 6.5 cats.)

Breakfast, alone again for me. At a table with Thanksgiving remains: the table cloth, the extra chairs and high chair, the puzzle. But no Ed. He's still sleeping and I want my coffee.

Eventually I head out to meet up with my daughter and her kids. Let's pick the biggest tree ever -- is the theme. My secondary assignment for this day is to do a holiday photo of the three kids, so I'm being more careful with my camera.

We're at Bruce's tree lot once again and did I mention it's a cold day??

They settle on a nine-footer. And then another little one for their mom's "office" (actually a corner of the bedroom). And lots of pine branches. The cars are loaded with green stuff. The kids are very patient with us.

Very patient.

We are in two cars. All the green stuff gets dropped off at their place and Sparrow stays home for his nap. Snowdrop comes to the farmhouse where, guess what, Ed is still slouched over the jigsaw puzzle.

Snowdrop and I hit the books.

Toward evening, she and I are back at her house. Time to decorate the Christmas tree!  I do believe this is my daughter's favorite holiday moment. There are lots of treats and the music's lovely and even the biggest chore (putting up the lights) seems like a fun play adventure.

(When he's not helping me untangle the lights, Sandpiper is happy just to watch everything and everyone around him...)

Done!

(Definition of a cozy evening....)

I come home in time for a late supper of leftovers with Ed. (That is, once I tear him away from working on the puzzle!) 

The friday after Thanksgiving wears many hats, but there's one that's reliably there for us, year after year: heating up the leftovers. From turkey to apple pie. Delicious leftovers.